Heroes of the Storm

[synistar]

Tried Sonya again after the rework. Why the hell do they keep rating her as Medium difficulty when she's the hardest warrior to play? She gets rekt so hard no matter what build you do. Plus, I didn't realize the nerf they gave her with WW in respect to hitting creeps. It barely heals you on a full wave even with Wrath of the Berserker. Back on the shelf of never being played she goes.

[Dakk-Siren]

Sonya is more of a melee assassin than a warrior. She can pump out some massive damage if she as the fury at the start of the fight but she will get killed almost instantly until 20 when you pick up ignore pain. This new rework almost has her at a good spot her slam damage is bonkers I just think they need to make her level 7 talent Ferocious Healing 20% + 10% over 4 seconds or drop its cooldown to only a few seconds. Its currently 10 seconds, and she wont last 10 seconds without an Uther or Rehgar.


As someone who follows the competitive hots blizzard just announced:


NA is pretty crappy except for 2-3 teams(Cloud 9 Maelstrom/TempStorm), EU has more good teams but only 1 that is as good as the best in NA(Team Liquid), and China/Korea are unknown. Rumor is China is insane at the game and use some crazy comps like Gazlow Zagara combos. But this is going to be fun to watch.

Also if anyone has not watched any competitive heroes on June 1 the 2 NA best teams will be playing a Bo5 for the WCA NA qualifier. C9M vs TempStorm

[Salodin]

Please keep the thread updated with live streams or vods, I wanna keep up with the tournaments.

[Dakk-Siren]

ESL runs 2 Bo3s on Tues / Thurs 8PM EST on http://www.twitch.tv/esl_heroes for NA. Eu does same days but in the morning, not sure of exact times but when i get home from work at 11am pst they are just about finished.
If you want to watch some good EU Khaldor does stuff almost everyday http://www.twitch.tv/khaldor does alot of EU games.

[Kiarax]

Alright so I was fucking with living bomb spread instead of the cooldown reduction one and it's pretty fucking stupid against bad players. I think Phoenix and the CDR reduction trait will be the best in organized high level comps but spread with ignite is fucking ridiculous against bad teams. A single D>Q can just kill an entire team, this hero is fucking stupid. Blows my mind dumbasses on reddit and the OF are defending him or saying hes underpowered, what a complete joke.

[Gulkeeva]

Alright so I was fucking with living bomb spread instead of the cooldown reduction one and it's pretty fucking stupid against bad players. I think Phoenix and the CDR reduction trait will be the best in organized high level comps but spread with ignite is fucking ridiculous against bad teams. A single D>Q can just kill an entire team, this hero is fucking stupid. Blows my mind dumbasses on reddit and the OF are defending him or saying hes underpowered, what a complete joke.

He's the scariest thing ever i think, at Lv16 with living bomb spread + flamestrike, and so far liking pyro waaayyy more then the phoenix. Although gadz gravity thing + phoenix would be interesting, or thralls earthquake. But without stuff like that, it just really doesn't... hurt ;/ I literally have to walk from one end to the other the phoenix to get the damage a pyro does when that hits. Sure you could toss it on an objective, and they can run out and you do near 0 damage to them, but thats kinda meh for an ultimate >.> Aim a pyro at a healer like bright wing, he can either stay with the group and slowly heal through its aoe damage or run from everyone, and if its Lv16 fight, you won't be healing through it grouped...

Fought a group earlier with 2 healers grouped up trying to cram in to try to gank us on the boss on the sphinix map, toss a pyro -> buffed flamestrike and between the 2 things hitting 4 people, BOOM instant death except a tank, was hilarious to see. Too bad people are starting to learn that group fights with kael at Lv 16+ is dangerous and to kill kael first ;/

[synistar]

The only way I see phoenix working well is to zone people in tight quarters, such as Spider tomb, Mines, fighting for curses. It's like Tassadar's stasis wall but doing damage instead of being a complete impediment. However the range of Pyroblast make it the easier choice as a fire-and-forget no skill missile.

Kael is going to get tuned down and I won't be surprised if the living bomb spread passive gets the nerf bat or outright eliminated come full game release time next month. Hell, 80% of the time you can't even see living bomb on a creep/other heroes in a hectic team fight because it's a graphic on the models. There has to be a better indicator at the very least so you can get better positioning.

An aside: I hate playing with passive Kerrigan players. If you not going YOLO with her, you're doing it wrong, especially with Maelstorm heroic.

[Gulkeeva]

The only way I see phoenix working well is to zone people in tight quarters, such as Spider tomb, Mines, fighting for curses. It's like Tassadar's stasis wall but doing damage instead of being a complete impediment. However the range of Pyroblast make it the easier choice as a fire-and-forget no skill missile.

Kael is going to get tuned down and I won't be surprised if the living bomb spread passive gets the nerf bat or outright eliminated come full game release time next month. Hell, 80% of the time you can't even see living bomb on a creep/other heroes in a hectic team fight because it's a graphic on the models. There has to be a better indicator at the very least so you can get better positioning.

An aside: I hate playing with passive Kerrigan players. If you not going YOLO with her, you're doing it wrong, especially with Maelstorm heroic.

haha if they nerfing kael, they will possibly nerf a few others, as is a decent nova Lv16, can take kael down from 80% -> 0 in about 1 second. People are starting to focus down kael like I mentioned earlier and it really hurts ;/ Zera ult is pretty much death also, even if you do your stun and run -> teleport to you ->continue the ult and you die before he dies even if its 5vs5

I can see living bomb "chained" damage reduced, phoenix buffed in some way (hell I run through its block aid too on kael if its to get away from someone, not like it really hurts at any level) and possibly a buff to his suitability besides the 45sec? 3 second 200% mana wall which has a use for maaaybe surviving triple tap/another pyro.

Considering triple tap is about 80% of kaels hp over 3 seconds if the same lvl, its pretty devastating, but the 25% damage buff slow, 250% shot, and the 20% sniper shot buff combo as mentioned above is 80% of kaels hp (if same lvl) 2 lvls above and you die instantly at 100% in 1 second (or less) and you won't even know it hit you if you aren't staring for her (or she was hiding in a bush).

Randomly, anub seems pretty deadly too lately, he sometimes jsut won't die even 2vs1

[chazzyphizzle]

nova isn't very good, and bursting down one target is literally all she can do

[Salodin]

You shouldn't be running from Nova with Kael, just stun her with your broken E. No matter what character you play as, that stun feels so damn cheap.

[Meian]

Nova not likely to be nerfed since Triple Tap can be body blocked, her escape is lol in comparison (slow vs stun), easier to stun the ult since it is much more obvious than Kael's Pyroblast.

[Gulkeeva]

You shouldn't be running from Nova with Kael, just stun her with your broken E. No matter what character you play as, that stun feels so damn cheap.

Its like any other stun class, like uthers hammer , or that dwarfs hammer toss. Probably only difference is it can be talented to move 2X range almost.

and yeah if you don't catch nova like I said earlier, you can pretty much 1 shot a kael. Kinda hard to see nova at night during shamblers, or the fog pirate ship, the rain during ravens curse. All it takes is 1 sec to combo a kael dead.

Plenty of chances to pick off kael...

behind the fort wall getting a mana drink, sitting at a objective with others to get laser tower/ravens thing, turning in coins, sitting behind wall shooting at golem, with others fighting a boss camp. Tons of opportunities to pick off a kael, unless he's sitting right inside something like the siege giants literally so snipe shot won't hit him (course you'll get hit by the other teams aoe that way).

So yeah, I was talking how kael can be picked off team fights, not 1vs1, or out soloing coins, or soloing objectives etc... and as mentioned, you don't even NEED triple tap to 100% kill a kael, just 2 lvls above and its instant, you won't even have time to say fuck. Sure its easy to spot nova, but with all the fog of war effects, and team fights, bushes n crap everywhere theris only so much distance/safety you can do where as nova can just sneak around masked behind stuff where you won't even see the cloaked unit.

I only mentioned the ult, because you can hit kael from about 2 screens away with it considering its range if you wanna be lazy (for instance mines) nova's ult can pretty much hit 1 side to the other down there aka, lazy mode shooting.

[Kachiko]

How is a one second hero kill anything close to 'strategy'? Are we exaggerating here? I've watched some twitching, and I've seen Keal go down fast, and also do some wicked stuff, but never much 1-1, with what I've so far seen.

[Gulkeeva]

How is a one second hero kill anything close to 'strategy'? Are we exaggerating here? I've watched some twitching, and I've seen Keal go down fast, and also do some wicked stuff, but never much 1-1, with what I've so far seen.

Yes there is a strategy to reduce kaels rape damage, where as there isn't so much vs nova, because you can see kael coming but not so much nova. Kaels damage is mainly from stuff exploding around you. Spread out, don't stand near other minions/players, kaels damage greatly reduced at lv 16+ to a hero team fight.

and no not exaggerating nova's 1 sec kill ability. It requires being stealthed, 20% damage buff to snipe, 250% auto attack buff, and 25% pinning shot damage to target.

The combo is

Stealthed > pinning shot target -> rightclick/ hit snipe on target same time to auto attack + snipe shot 2,500ish damage. If you setup with the decoy first, do the combo after decoy does pinning shot for an extra 80-100ish damage (at Lv20). 2 lvl difference, and there ya go 100% hp -> to dead for most any assassin/healer

/demo of the combo (missing the decoy usage but close enough) during a team fight
If nova didn't get a heal as soon as my first shot landed, nova would have died >.>

http://www.neko-sentai.com/images14/Nova.gif

This combo does about 400-500 damage less if NOT done in 1 second. ( +20% damage buff to snipe shot which only lasts 1 second after losing stealth if too slow) and this is the most feared thing for kael, you don't have time to do shit by the time the combo starts (total time from start to finish of the combo with the killing shot already firing totals .7 seconds)

If you got reflexes to catch where nova is firing from, select gravity well and actually cast that and have it reach nova in that time frame, my hats off to you (gravity well will have about .2-.3 seconds to reach nova at that distance in the video so you got less then .3 seconds to react before the combo fires off and your gravity well hit)

[Salodin]

2 lvl difference

umm...thats a pretty big requirement for teams of equalish skill. Especially in the 20s when even a big level lead in the beginning equals MAYBE 1 1/2 level difference, and if that's the case then your team isn't winning any ways.

That said, it's not easy doing that quickly and accurately with nova; especially against a moving target. What I'm saying is, it takes at least some skill with clicking and moving a mouse to achieve with any decent rate of success. The same can be said for Kael, while the strict time limit isn't there for him, if the player is skilled enough to notice a cloaked Nova than she's pretty much stunned immediately. If the Kael was smart (and he is, because he's as skilled as your hypothetical nova), he would not only have stunned her but already combo'd on her causing her to retreat if she didn't want to die.

[Gulkeeva]

As I mentioned earlier , if the 2 teams were same lvl, that nova combo will do at least 80% of your HP (on an assassin/healer) 50% of a tank about. As for 1-2 lvl difference, as long as your team hasn't qq'ed and just gave up and yolo'ed and actually try to win still you can make a come back on a lvl difference. Had a decent amount of games make a return, especially once Lv16 abilities hit.

As for that combo I used, that target was moving (the animation is slowed slightly from actual game speed). Unless you do some sort of constant zig zag movement or zagara ontop of colony, or just so happen to be using a leap in that moment (sort of like that lili heal luckily was aimed AT nova before I started my shots even went off) their is a very low chance to be missing in a .7 second time frame.

The only downside of the combo, is if something else gets in the way (minions, or 2 tanks, or several melee dps ontop of each other) since it is a hit and run tactic every 10 seconds about. The best time to do the combo, is when someone is running toward the group to throw something in a team fight and aim behind them (say hiding in a bush) as 99% chance, people will run straight back after throwing something, not up or down. The hardest part, is getting the combo off in time, not the aiming. Your snipe shot HAS TO LAND, before 1 second or it does not get the buff from cloak, and your auto shot HAS to land in under 2 seconds, or it won't get +25% damage buff, and you have to force that auto shot or you won't shoot.

[Tohmane]

I started playing this past weekend because the future promotional for a Hearthstone cardback, and surprisingly enough found it really fun. Being anti-MOBA from the LoL community though, how's the HotS community in comparison? Versus AI 24h wait exp caps hitting me hard but I'll live with that if people blow up on you for not knowing every little detail of every aspect of the game.

[synistar]

You don't get any chatter from the enemy team at all. And you have the option to mute your team. It's like you can completely block out any human contact if you so desire and play however you want to play. But it can be typical MOBA toxicity otherwise.

[Tohmane]

That's good to know that I have the option to mute if things go overboard, PvP won't be an issue then. Exp cap woes dissipated, thanks.

[Purrrfect]

You could mute in League as well. Not that it doesn't have asshole players, but that's been an option ever since I started.